Sunday, January 28, 2007

There’s a slow poison out there that’s severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it’s a “health food,” one of our most popular.

Now, I’m a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it’s organic. I state my bias here just so you’ll know I’m not anti-health food.

The dangerous food I’m speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they’re all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore.

I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you’re also getting substantial quantities of estrogens.

Estrogens are female hormones. If you’re a woman, you’re flooding your system with a substance it can’t handle in surplus. If you’re a man, you’re suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your “female side,” physically and mentally.

In fetal development, the default is being female. All humans (even in old age) tend toward femininity. The main thing that keeps men from diverging into the female pattern is testosterone, and testosterone is suppressed by an excess of estrogen.

If you’re a grownup, you’re already developed, and you’re able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren’t so fortunate. Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you’re giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby’s endocrine system just can’t cope with that kind of massive assault, so some damage is inevitable. At the extreme, the damage can be fatal.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

Doctors used to hope soy would reduce hot flashes, prevent cancer and heart disease, and save millions in the Third World from starvation. That was before they knew much about long-term soy use. Now we know it’s a classic example of a cure that’s worse than the disease. For example, if your baby gets colic from cow’s milk, do you switch him to soy milk? Don’t even think about it. His phytoestrogen level will jump to 20 times normal. If he is a she, brace yourself for watching her reach menarche as young as seven, robbing her of years of childhood. If he is a boy, it’s far worse: He may not reach puberty till much later than normal.

Research in 2000 showed that a soy-based diet at any age can lead to a weak thyroid, which commonly produces heart problems and excess fat. Could this explain the dramatic increase in obesity today?

Recent research on rats shows testicular atrophy, infertility and uterus hypertrophy (enlargement). This helps explain the infertility epidemic and the sudden growth in fertility clinics. But alas, by the time a soy-damaged infant has grown to adulthood and wants to marry, it’s too late to get fixed by a fertility clinic.

Worse, there’s now scientific evidence that estrogen ingredients in soy products may be boosting the rapidly rising incidence of leukemia in children. In the latest year we have numbers for, new cases in the U.S. jumped 27 per cent. In one year!

There’s also a serious connection between soy and cancer in adults – especially breast cancer. That’s why the governments of Israel, the UK, France and New Zealand are already cracking down hard on soy.

In sad contrast, 60 per cent of the refined foods in U.S. supermarkets now contain soy. Worse, soy use may double in the next few years because (last I heard) the out-of-touch medicrats in the FDA hierarchy are considering allowing manufacturers of cereal, energy bars, fake milk, fake yogurt, etc., to claim that “soy prevents cancer.” It doesn’t.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Small Kona Coffee Growers Need Your Help

There has been quite a battle brewing between the small coffee farmers and bigger commercial enterprises. It got to the point, in Hawaii, that the forces aligned on the other side of this issue got proxies in their dogs, cats and children’s names to take control of the Kona Coffee Council and water down the Kona name.

Please take the time to register your concern on this issue. Click on the link in the message. And, please cut and paste this into a message of your own and pass it on now. Time is of the essence.

Aloha all,

Thank you for being a friend of smithfarms. I am leaning on your kindness to ask you for this favor below and I would not do it if our chances weren’t so good and also, the fact that numbers of names DO matter to our Legislature.

We are asking you for your help in helping all the Kona Coffee farmers in Kona. We have a big chance to succeed and Bob and I are begging for your help and here’s why……

As I wrote in to our newsgroup

“Two great Legislators in our Hawaii State Legislature did indeed introduce 2 Bills asking that the amount of Kona in a Kona blend, be raised to 75 per cent Kona coffee at least, to use the Kona name. We Kona Coffee farmers have fought for this such an introduction for 14 (!) years. A Bill in our House of Representatives and one in our Senate!

Now is the time to mobilize. You all care about coffee and we really need your help.

We Farmers have an electronic petition on line and I am blatantly begging that you take a second and go here and sign our petition.

Time Is Of The Essence as they may hear the bills this week! Yikes!!!

Numbers of names do(!) matter and every one of you who signs it, will be directly helping a farmer of Kona Coffee!

We have a huge nasty opposition of blenders who want to keep their investment low and keep the Blend at only 10 per cent real Kona. (The other 90 per cent is probably super junk.) Our opposition has paid lobbyists and many schmoozers who are doing their work.

We looked into a Lobbyist but he asked for $24,000 and we don’t have it. The Kona Coffee Farmers is totally volunteer and certainly, non-profit! So we are grassroots- actually coffee shrubs and ever so hopeful but time is of the essence!

Thanking each of you in advance, for taking the time to sign the Petition and for helping the Farmers.

If you would like further information about these bills, you are welcome to visit http://KonaCoffeeFarmers.org and click on the link “KCFA Legislative Programs/Blend Law Reform.”

Thank you for your help. It is the power of the mighty (computer) pen at work. It really matters so much to all Kona Coffee Farmers!

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Code Dogs Hound the Plank

By Ernie Grimm [Published in the San Diego Reader — Jan. 25, 2007]

Ask a nonresident of Imperial Beach to name a restaurant or bar in San Diego County’s southernmost beach town. If he can name anything at all, it likely will be Ye Olde Plank Inn. The tavern has occupied the ground floor of the two-story building at the west end of Palm Avenue for nearly four decades. In that time, it’s opened every day at 6 a.m. and closed every night at 2 a.m. “The Plank,” as it’s known locally, has achieved institution status in Imperial Beach. But according to its owner, 73-year-old Al Winkelman, the Plank bar is under attack by a city government that wants the venerable watering hole gone.

It’s only 10 a.m. on a Tuesday in December. But already, seven customers occupy barstools at the end of the Plank’s three-sided bar closest to the front door. Most drink coffee — better than most bar coffee — while a couple nurse beers and nibble on hot wings. They’re clearly regulars, and judging by the boisterousness of their conversation, they all know each other. They’re talking and laughing so loudly that it’s difficult to hear the very soft-spoken Winkelman say, “That blonde with her back to us is a lawyer from Chula Vista. And this woman on the corner, her name is Tappan. Her grandfather is the one that started the Tappan kitchen range company. The guy sitting next to her is a retired SEAL. There used to be a man who came in here damn near every day who was one of the original people with Apple Computer.”

The Plank’s decor combines elements of three or four themes. Over the bar hangs a palm frond ceiling reminiscent of a Baja-style palapa. The bar and tabletops are trimmed with molding cut to look like nautical cables. Surf paraphernalia hangs on the walls. The back room’s dusty-cornered concrete floor, neon beer signs, and two pool tables give it a middle-American honky-tonk look. Except for the ruby earring adorning his left ear, nothing about Winkelman’s appearance says “owns a popular beachside bar.” He’s dressed in comfortable shoes, gray slacks, and two windbreakers zipped up against the damp morning air. His thick blond-gone-gray hair, roughly parted on the left, lies tousled on his head. His soft blue eyes reflect his kind, gentle manner. His nickname, Uncle Al, fits perfectly. “I got that nickname in 1979 when my nephew spent a summer working in the bar with me. He was always calling to me, ‘Uncle Al, Uncle Al.’ Some of the customers thought that was funny and started calling me Uncle Al too.”

Asked when he bought Ye Olde Plank Inn, Winkelman answers, “Oh, I can’t remember. Between 35 and 40 years ago. Let’s say 37 years ago.” During the first 30 or so of those years, Winkelman says business was great and life was a breeze in his bar by the beach. But starting “six or seven” years ago, Winkelman says he and the Plank became the focus of what he calls harassment by the City of Imperial Beach in the form of the municipality’s code enforcement department.

“I’ll show you what I mean.” He hops off his bar stool and walks behind the bar. “Around 1999, all of a sudden we’ve got a brand-new fire inspector, and he needs a whole bunch of things done. For instance, I had a fire extinguisher back here. It had been in the same place for 30 years, and all my employees knew where it was. But he said we had to move it. This back door over here, I had to build a new door for it. Before, I had a door with bars on it, but the way it was built, it wasn’t really a door, but we could have pushed it out in an emergency. We had to replace that with this door that has a panic bar. This building was built in 1886. Since it was built, the front door has always swung in. But they decided it had to swing out. I didn’t want to have it swing out because of foot traffic here on the sidewalk. It will either be blocking traffic or, if it’s closed, someone is going to push it and smash someone’s face with the door. So I went out and bought all these hinges here that allow the door to swing in or out. When we open at 6 in the morning, we swing it in and lock it in the open position. It stays that way until we close at 2 a.m. It’s what we’d done for 30 years. So why we had to change it to swing out is beyond me. Especially, since the fire code says a door only has to swing out if the room capacity is 50 or more. You can see on the sign right there, my capacity is 36. I pointed that out to them, but they wanted it this way anyway.”

Another source of grief with the fire inspector was the palapa-style ceiling over the bar area. “We put that grass ceiling on there on Labor Day of 1969,” Winkelman says, “and there was fire retardant on it and everything. But they wanted it all down. So we had to take everything down and replace it with newer stuff that won’t burn. But it is a lot of time and effort to take everything down and research it and order it and put it up there. And it cost a lot of money.”

Though he didn’t like it, Winkelman spent the time and money to comply with the fire inspector’s wishes. But he drew a line in the sand when the City said he could no longer park his cars on the small lawn on the corner of Palm and Seacoast, part of the same property the Plank sits on. Standing out on the patchy lawn under a couple of palm trees, Winkelman explains, “I own three Corvettes, and I used to park a couple of them on the grass right here. I would drive them up over the curb and park them here. This is my property, I own it, and it’s zoned commercial. Now along comes David Garcias” — Imperial Beach’s director of code enforcement — “and he tells me that I can’t park here, that I have to have a driveway, and it has to be concreted, I can’t park on the lawn, and all that stuff. Basically, I told him to go away, quit bothering me. I am legal. So anyway, after quite a while he comes over here with the ordinance telling me, ‘This ordinance says it has to be parked on concrete.’ And I said, ‘David, this ordinance refers to single-family and two-family dwellings in a residential area. This is commercial property.’ He came back one or two days later and said, ‘I found a new ordinance that does affect you,’ and he showed it to me. I read it, and he had kept the entire ordinance, but he changed a couple of words and deleted the last clause, ‘in a residential area.’ And so then he was able to apply it to me.”

Believing Garcias had illegally altered the municipal code to fit the situation, Winkelman refused to comply and continued parking on the grass next to the Plank. Garcias, he says, “continued pounding me on it. And he even came out here and posted a notice right there on the corner of my building condemning my property, for being a public nuisance, unsafe, and unfit for human habitation.”

Winkelman adds, “It’s harassment. And it’s selective. I can drive you up and down this street,” he points south down Seacoast, “and show you cars parked on gravel, on grass, on all kinds of things, but they are all perfectly all right. And I can show you pictures that I took nearly two years ago that I showed to the city council when they had me up there for this big fine that they were charging me — $100 or $200 a day — for parking on my lawn. The same cars are still on the same spots two years later.”

Garcias doesn’t deny condemning the Plank due to Winkelman’s noncompliance on the parking issue, though he vehemently denies the accusation that he personally altered an ordinance to make it illegal for Winkelman to park his Corvettes next to the Plank. With an audible laugh, he says, “We would never do that. He has gone in front of judges and the city council, and in each case, they said, ‘The law was correct.’ I can’t change the law. I am only an enforcement person. I go off of what the city code says, and the city code is enacted by the city council after public hearings and all that stuff.”

Winkelman believes the fire inspector and code enforcement department were sicced on him by a gentrification-minded city council that “doesn’t want any alcohol near the beach.” Ed Kravitz, the publisher of a news and opinion website called saveIB.com, which is critical of the city government, agrees with Winkelman’s assessment. “They want to make bars an endangered species,” Kravitz says. “And they know if Al is closed for more than 90 days, the zoning goes back to residential. So they’d like to hang him up for any reason to close him. And the city council is known to use the code enforcement department to punish people and businesses they don’t like.”

Ted Powers, former commissioner of the now-defunct Imperial Beach planning commission, shares Kravitz’s view. “The council,” he says, “uses the code enforcement department as a revenue generator, and they use it as a political battle axe to punish people.”

Kravitz adds, “The code enforcement department should be complaint driven. But in IB, it hasn’t been for the last decade. It’s proactively driven, meaning that they are out looking for violations. The intent was — and I believe this was said publicly at a council meeting in 1995 or ‘96 — that they were going to use code enforcement to revitalize Imperial Beach.”

Garcias denies that he’s being prompted by the city council to enforce codes at the Plank. Rather, he says he’s responding to “a rising number of citizen complaints. In Winkelman’s case, I can’t be too specific because there is litigation involved, but I can generally say, all of them were citizen complaints. We always let the owner know they’re in violation. And I have to admit, there have been people who are very resistant to cleaning up. Sometimes they say, ‘I have been doing this for 50 years, why are you taking this to me now?’ And a lot of times it is because I got a citizen complaint and I have to.”

Asked why after 30-plus years of peaceful existence, the Plank has become the subject of citizen complaints, Garcias points to the recent rise in property values in Imperial Beach. “This city is in clean-up mode. We’ve got a lot of new owners who paid, let’s say, $600,000 or $700,000 for their new home. And they get in the house and they look at their back-yard neighbor who has seven or eight junk cars in the back yard. So they call me to complain. My job is to respond to those complaints.”

Faced with a condemnation of his property, Winkelman stopped parking his cars on the lawn. But he’s sued the City over the issue. “I don’t like the idea of going to court,” he says. “It is costing me money, and in a way it is foolish and stupid. But I am not going to lie down and roll over and play dead for them. That is what most people would do, but I am not going to do it. So if it costs me $5000, $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 to fight them, I am doing it.”

Monday, January 22, 2007

Please Use the Correct Names

Because of the climate of political correctness now pervading America, Kentuckians, Tennesseans and West Virginians will no longer be referred to as "Hillbillies." You must now refer to them as Appalachian-Americans. And furthermore:

How to Speak About Women and be Politically Correct

1. She is not a “babe” or a “chick” — She is a “Breasted American.”2. She is not “easy” — She is “Horizontally Accessible.”3. She is not a "dumb blonde" — She is a "Light-Haired Detour Off The Information Superhighway."4. She has not “been around” — She is a “Previously-Enjoyed Companion.”5. She does not “nag” you — She becomes “Verbally Repetitive.”6. She is not a “two-bit hooker” — She is a “Low-Cost Provider.”

How to Speak About Men and be Politically Correct

1. He does not have a "beer gut" — He Has Developed a "Liquid Grain Storage Facility."2. He is not a “bad dancer” — He is “Overly Caucasian.”3. He does not “get lost all the time” — He "Investigates Alternative Destinations."4. He is not “balding” — He is in “Follicle Regression.”5. He does not act like a "total ass" — He Develops a Case Of Rectal-Cranial Inversion."6. It's not his "crack" you see hanging out of his pants — It's "Rear Cleavage."

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Codex Alimentarius Summarized in Seven PointsHealthFreedomUSA.org, the Web site of the Natural Solutions Foundation, is beholden to no one: our only interest is health freedom. Rima E. Laibow, MD, successful natural medicine physician since the 1970s, has studied 16,000 pages of Codex documentation. Her conclusion is that people who say that Codex is “consumer protection”, “voluntary”, or “harmless” are, at best, seriously mistaken.

1) Started in 1962 by UN, Imposed by WTO SanctionsCodex Alimentarius was created in 1962 as a trade Commission by the UN to control the international trade of food. Its initial intentions may have been altruistic but it has been taken over by corporate interests, most notably the pharmaceutical, pesticide, biotechnology and chemical industries.

Codex Alimentarius is backed up by the crippling trade sanctions of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Any non Codex-compliant nation would face huge economic punishment since they would automatically lose in any food-trade dispute with a Codex compliant country.

2) “Nutrients are Toxins” Is Junk ScienceCodex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) has two committees which impact nutrition.

One of them, the “Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses” (CCNFSDU), is chaired by Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, a physician who believes that nutrition has no role in health. This is the “top-guy” for Codex nutritional policy, and he has stated that “nutrition is not relevant to health”.

As unbelievable as it may sound, Dr. Grossklaus actually declared nutrients to be toxins in 1994 and instituted the use of toxicology (Risk Assessment) to prevent nutrients from having any impact on humans who take supplements! It is worth mentioning that Dr. Grossklaus happens to own the Risk Assessment company advising CCNFSDU and Codex on this issue. This company makes money when its toxicology services are used for the “assessment” of nutrients. Here in the U.S. we call that a “conflict of interest”.

Codex is made up of thousands of standards and guidelines. One of them, the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG), is designed to permit only ultra low doses of vitamins and minerals (and make clinically effective nutrients illegal). How can the VMG restrict dosages of vitamins and minerals? By using Risk Assessment (toxicology) to assess nutrients.

While Risk Assessment is a legitimate science (it is a branch of toxicology), it is the wrong science for assessing nutrients! In fact, in this context, it is actually junk science. Biochemistry, the science of life processes, is the correct science for assessing nutrients. Codex Alimentarius treats nutrients as toxins, which is literally insane.

Nutrients are not toxins — they are essential for life.

No matter what Codex Alimentarius officials say to convince you that Risk Assessment is a “science-based” approach to nutrients, it is not.

And it is worth repeating that Dr. Grossklaus, the head of Codex Alimentarius, owns the Risk Assessment company advising CCNFSDU and Codex on the “benefit” of using Risk Assessment to assess nutrients.

3) Not Consumer Protection — That’s PropagandaContrary to the propaganda, Codex Alimentarius has nothing to do with consumer protection. Nothing! Codex is about the economic ambitions of multi-national corporations, in particular, the pharmaceutical industry.

Using their multi billion-dollar marketing budgets, these industries have launched a massive media propaganda campaign to paint Codex Alimentarius as a benevolent tool of “consumer protection”, as well as to negatively taint the image of natural health options and mislead people to fear them as “dangerous”, so they will take drugs (which really are dangerous). Natural health products and options have an amazing safety record and are remarkably effective, especially when compared to pharmaceutical drugs.

Unfortunately, one-time defenders of health freedom such as National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA) and Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) have joined the propaganda bandwagon and are spreading false information saying that Codex Alimentarius is either “harmless” or benevolent “consumer protection”. Neither is true.

The membership of these one-time defenders of health freedom has become permeated by people from the pharmaceutical industry (for example, CRN counts as its members corporations such as Monsanto® and Bayer®).

4) Codex: Serious Threat to Health and Health FreedomIf Codex Alimentarius is implemented in the United States of America, therapeutic dosages of vitamins and minerals (and all other nutrients soon to follow) will become unavailable because they will literally become illegal.

Here’s how it would work, in a nut-shell:

Due to the junk science use of Risk Assessment (toxicology) to assess supposedly toxic nutrients, a false belief is being engineered saying that “nutritional supplements are dangerous to people’s health”.

Using this false belief generates calls to “protect” people from these “toxic” nutrients. After the calls come the bills to set ultra low permissible dosages (remember, nutrients are deemed “dangerous toxins” under this false belief). If enough of us and our Congressional delegates buy this nonsense, we and Congress would blindly comply with Codex Alimentarius’ VMG. And blind compliance is what the industries behind Codex Alimentarius intend.

Blind compliance goes hand-in-hand with lack of activism. This lack of activism allows our protective laws, classifying nutrients as foods with no upper limits (such as DSHEA), to be easily repealed and replaced with draconian laws to classify nutrients as toxins. And “harmonization” with the pro-illness, pro-pharmaceutical industry Vitamin and Mineral Guideline is there to fill the void.

Only intentionally ineffective, ultra low dose supplements would be legal, with or without a prescription, on the VMG list. If enough people do not take action, we can expect to watch nutritional supplement manufacturers and, thus health food stores, to go out of business, in a domino effect. The only player left standing would be Big Pharma.

Therapeutic grade vitamins, minerals, and amino acids would be eliminated from the marketplace (although a few low-dose supplements would be allowed by Codex, as a symbolic measure to avoid suspicion about their ulterior motive).

Natural health professionals would lose the tools of their trade (nutritional supplements) and health conscious people would be unable to choose natural health options for health promotion and disease treatment.

And that is, in a nutshell, how Codex Alimentarius is poised to make Natural and Nutritional Medicine (NNM) disappear from the legal health world and go underground. Who benefits? Big Pharma.

It would take a few years for the above scenarios to be feasible (Codex Alimentarius is meant to go into full global effect by 2010). The slower the process takes, the less alarmed people will be. That’s probably the logic of the architects of Codex Alimentarius.

5) Serves Economic Interests of Sickness Industries Through WTO and Napoleonic CodeMore and more people are turning to natural health products globally. The “wellness” trend is a major trend in today’s society. The more natural health products people use, the fewer drugs they buy. The pharmaceutical industry, which is part of the “Sickness Industry”, fears the inevitable shift toward natural health care.

Instead of accepting the will of the people and rethinking the future of the pharmaceutical industry, the industry has decided upon an unethical course of action: the use of deception and deceit to eliminate natural health products completely.

Codex Alimentarius is a shrewd vehicle for protecting the pharmaceutical industry from the loss of income it stands to suffer due to the inevitable growth of natural healthcare.

Codex Alimentarius is the resistance of the dinosaurs to inevitability: the burgeoning desire of humanity for a healthier, saner, and more sustainable way of life.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) intends to force Codex Alimentarius upon the nations of the world, including the U.S. This would be done under the threat of massive economic sanctions if WTO-countries do not comply with Codex Alimentarius.

Furthermore, Codex is based in the Napoleonic Code, not Common Law. That means that under Codex Alimentarius, anything not explicitly permitted is forbidden. Under Common Law, we hold that anything not explicitly forbidden is permitted. The difference is the difference between health freedom and health tyranny. Codex Alimentarius would be able to ban supplements by default.

6) DSHEA Protects America From Codex AlimentariusThe Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA, 1994), an American law classifying our supplements and herbs as foods (which can have no upper limit set on their use), was passed by unanimous Congressional consent following massive grass-roots support organized by health food stores. Millions of American activists told Congress, in no uncertain terms:

“Protect nutritional supplements as foods or we will remove you from office”.

Congress listened and carried out the will of the people.

DSHEA appropriately classifies nutritional supplements as foods which can have no upper limits set on their use. DSHEA recognizes that people use nutrients safely to deal with their individually differing needs for nutrients. The concept of biochemical individuality means that people have different needs for nutrients at different times. Are nutrients toxins? No, they are not toxins. They are substances essential to prevent, treat and cure any chronic condition, in differing doses at different times in different people.

DSHEA protects the US from Codex Alimentarius’ deadly Vitamin and Mineral Guideline. We must reach our Congressional members, educate them about the facts on Codex Alimentarius and direct them to vote against anything that would threaten DSHEA.

Congress holds the keys to our health freedom. And it is their job to listen to us. Let’s not allow cynicism to tell us otherwise. We did it for DSHEA in 1994. We can do it again in 2005.

7) Your Action is Needed Now!DSHEA is under significant legislative attack right now. Your letter-writing is crucial: if the members of Congress know that voting against health freedom means losing their jobs come election time, they will listen. Our job is to make sure they get the message loud and clear. Take action via our 3 easy steps and send personalized emails to Congress right now.

After taking action on HealthFreedomUSA.org, consider getting together with others in your area and visit your Congressional members in their home offices. If we wait, we lose our health freedoms. Once we “HARMonize” with Codex, by the way, we no longer have the right, while we belong to the WTO, to repeal or change that “HARMonization”!

ConclusionThe objective of the pro-Codex Alimentarius multi nationals is to “boil the frog slowly” so that we do not wake up to it in time to avoid Codex.

Once we have “HARMonize” to Codex Alimentarius, as long as we are in the WTO, we cannot amend or change what we’ve been “HARMonize” to.

Codex Alimentarius will go into global implementation by December 31, 2009, unless We, the People, avert it. We must act now because right now, with $758 Million spent on declared Congressional lobbying by Big Pharma last year, there are members of Congress who are trying to overturn DSHEA and allow Pharma-friendly free reign for Codex. If protective laws like DSHEA are destroyed, the sanctioning power of the autocratic WTO kicks in, and it will be impossible to get out from under Codex Alimentarius. We can protect our access to high potency nutrients and stave off an adulterated food supply only by putting pressure on Congress.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

And No Religion Too

Every once in a while, my former colleague Kelley Dupuis sends me a mass e-mail that invites everybody he knows to take a look at the latest posting on his blog. Assuming he was looking for somebody to engage him in debate, I used to read these postings looking for something controversial on which I might hang an argument. I thought the exercise might do our minds some good.
But the trouble with Kelley's bloggery is that it's usually full of commonplace notations about the perfectly charming wedding of his best friend's daughter or "Have you noticed the policemen are looking younger?" or "Last night I dreamed I went back to Mandalay again...," stuff that doesn't really inspire any kind of rebuttal. But, on Dec. 28, 2006, he sent me something titled "Kelley's Blog tackles yet another weighty issue." So, the game was afoot!
Kelley's weighty issue turned out to be a rambling tirade against atheists, Darwinism and what he likes to call "atheism chic" as if non-believers are now in as much vogue as the Black Panthers were when Tom Wolfe caught them drinking the Bernsteins' sherry.
So I took time to sit down and compose some kind of a counter position. I have to say it wasn't easy. Arguing with a whiskey-fueled agnostic is a lot like fighting fog. But I managed to match his peevish tone with a tirade of my own and when I posted the 1,500 words in the comments section of Kelley's blog, I was wondering what he was going to come back at me with. Where would this lead?
There was no response until Jan. 2, 2007 when he sent me a short e-mail: "Re your comment about my posting criticizing Richard Dawkins for being a jerk. For an editor, you talk a lot. You used 1,500 words to say what you could have said in 100. Did I step on your atheistic toes, Monsieur Burgess?" And blow me down if he hadn't deleted my comment from his blog.
My response was to e-mail him a short reply, "Is this how you debate? I'm baffled." And until today, I thought the only copy of my contribution to Kelley's Darwin debate was lost forever. But today I found a copy in my e-mail. So I thought I might as well share it with the world. Anybody who feels like chipping in with his or her own two pennorth is welcome to use the comments box below.Your world is upside down. Your talent might be better exercised by asking why on earth Paris Hilton is a bigger celebrity than Richard Dawkins who, after all, is a world-class biologist with a track record of academic achievement?
If Dawkins is truly asking for people to be locked up, he must have lost his marbles. So what? How does that change anything in this "neverending debate between Darwinists and creationists?" If the creationists prove that Dawkins has bad manners, does this imply that the Judeo-Christian paternal deity constructed the world within the last 10,000 years and planted some fossilized evidence of dinosaurs as some kind of a prank.
You're saying there's nothing new in atheism. So what? Does an idea have to be new to be true? Possibly atheism predates beliefs in the sky god, the sun god and the shadow that lurks behind us when we sit around the camp fire. Your world is upside down. Doubt is older than the lies made up by the priesthood.
There are many different flavors of creationism these days. Which man of straw is a respectable atheist supposed to be arguing with? Neo-Creationists intentionally distance themselves from other forms of creationism, preferring to be known as wholly separate from creationism as a philosophy. Intelligent design (ID) is the concept that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Its leading proponents, all of whom are affiliated with the Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian think tank, claim that intelligent design is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing with, or is superior to, current scientific theories regarding the origin of life. So what?
The evolution of species and the origins of the universe aren't things I worry about very often. I'm more bothered by the way theology is used to justify man's inhumanity to man. I think superstition is a natural human response to the fear of death. It's a form of denial. I have a certainty about that.
I don't personally believe in an afterlife and I think it's profoundly immoral for thousands of young people to be ordered to their certain death by a president or a general who can sleep soundly in his bed believing those soldiers have ascended to a better place. This is how it was for General Haig during the worst carnage of World War I. Nothing seems to have changed now we have Bush the Younger as commander in chief of US forces during the present war in Iraq. I'm certain that such a state of affairs is immoral and unethical. I would be in favor of making it illegal for such a superstitious character to command armies.
You're wondering why anybody would be proud to adopt the worldview of Lucretius "who lived 1,500 years before such basic scientific tools as the telescope and microscope." Lucretius was a poet and philosopher who sought to free men's minds of superstition and the fear of death. Surely such a worldview is all the more admirable for its being 1,500 years before such basic scientific tools as the telescope and microscope. Your world is upside down.
To blame both world wars on the French Revolution is a bit like Mel Gibson blaming the Jews. Are you saying the Napoleonic Wars were a bad thing? Was the American Revolution also a bad thing, Monsieur Dupuis? Can't we blame anything on British colonialism? Can't we celebrate capitalism and the enlightenment and their triumph over feudalism and the dark ages?
Atheism doesn't depend on all or any of Darwin's theories being true. However, American schools should not be wasting students time with nonsense about "Intelligent Design" in a science class. I worry for the future of this country when I see that 13% of Americans believe that Creationism and evolution should be taught as 'scientific theories' in science class and 16% of Americans believe that only Creationism should be taught.
Most of us thought the Scopes Monkey trial settled something in 1925. From the Hollywood movie, you would think the case was settled in favor of common sense and that nice actor who played Darren in Bewitched must have been allowed to go back to his classroom. In real life the teacher who had dared to teach science was never allowed to teach again.
Atheism certainly doesn't depend on all atheists not being bloodthirsty dictators. Who elected Stalin to represent rationalism? To hold him up as a representative figure is as ridiculous as Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen (1862-1910) being nominated as the epitome of the medical practitioner. Come to think of it, many thousands of Americans are killed by doctors every year. How many innocent lives would be spared if we could lock up all the doctors?
Recently, the British comedian Stephen Fry appeared as a guest on Craig Ferguson's late night television show and said the history of religious conflict is the history of one person saying his imaginary friend was better than your imaginary friend. He was quoting Yassar Arafat.
So what's your point? Your world is upside down.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

When you are young and foolish, speedy and flashy may be a good thing. When you get older and smarter, comfortable and dull is not such a bad thing.

A C-130 was lumbering along when a cocky F-16 flashed by. The jet jockey decided to show off.

The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, “Watch this!” and promptly went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb. He then finished with a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier. The F-16 pilot asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that?

The C-130 pilot said, “That was impressive, but watch this!” The C-130 droned along for about 5 minutes and then the C-130
pilot came back on and said “What did you think of that?”

Puzzled, the F-16 pilot asked, “What the hell did you do?”

The C-130 pilot chuckled. "I stood up, stretched my legs, went to the back, took a leak, then got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun."

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Bluesnarfing — Coming to An Area Near You

Britain is on the verge of a high-tech crime wave. The target is cell phones. Bluetooth phones are vulnerable to proximity hacking, or Bluesnarfing. As with a traditional pick-pocket, you won’t know you’ve been bluesnarfed until it’s too late. The hacker can virtually control your cell phone without the phone showing it’s connected to something — giving free rein for the joker to make calls, text or manage your phonebook.

Don't confuse it with Bluejacking, which is merely the sending of unsolicited messages over Bluetooth to Bluetooth-enabled devices such as mobile phones, PDAs or laptop computers, sending a vCard which typically contains a message in the name field (i.e. for bluedating or bluechat) to another bluetooth enabled device via the OBEX protocol.

Bluesnarfing, on the other hand, quickly turns invasion of privacy into a money-stealing scheme. Prior to the hustle, the hackers create a premium-rate line — like a 900 number in the US. Once they commandeer the phone, the hustlers dial the 900 number and Ka-ching, Ka-ching!

Monday, January 01, 2007

Avoid Splenda in 2007 — Artificial Sweetener Explodes InternallyBy Shane Ellison, M.Sc.
If there were a contest for the best example of total disregard for human life the victor would be McNeil Nutritionals — makers of Splenda™. Manufacturers of Vioxx™ and Lipitor™ would tie for a very distant second.

McNeil Nutritionals is the undisputed drug-pushing champion for disguising their drug Splenda™ as a sweetener. Regardless of its drug qualities and potential for side-effects, McNeil is dead set on putting it on every kitchen table in America. Apparently, Vioxx™ and Lipitor™ makers can’t stoop so low as to deceptively masquerade their drug as a candy of sorts. There is no question that their products are drugs and by definition come with negative side effects. Rather than sell directly to the consumer, these losers have to go through the painful process of using doctors to prescribe their dangerous goods.

A keen student in corporate drug dealing, McNeil learned from aspartame and saccharine pushers that if a drug tastes sweet, then let the masses eat it in their cake. But first you have to create a facade of natural health. They did this using a cute trade name that kind of sounds like splendid and packaged it in pretty colors. Hypnotized, the masses were duped instantly. As unquestioning as a dog that humps your leg, millions of diabetics (and non-diabetics) blindly eat sucralose under the trade name Splenda™ in place of real sugar (sucrose).

Splenda™ was strategically released on April fools day in 1998. This day is reserved worldwide for hoaxes and practical jokes on friends and family, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible. McNeil certainly succeeded.

The splendid Splenda™ hoax is costing gullible Americans $187 million annually.1 While many people wonder about the safety of Splenda™ they rarely question it. Despite its many unknowns and inherent dangers, Splenda™ demand has grown faster than its supply. No longer do I have to question my faith in my fellow Man. He is not a total idiot, just a gullible one. McNeil jokesters are laughing all the way to the bank.

Splenda is not as harmless as McNeil wants you to believe. A mixture of sucralose, maltodextrine and dextrose (a detrimental simple sugar), each of the not-so-splendid Splenda™ ingredients has downfalls. Aside from the fact that it really isn’t “sugar and calorie free,” here is one big reason to avoid the deceitful mix…Think April Fools Day.

Splenda™ contains a potential poisonSplenda™ contains the drug sucralose. This chemical is 600 times sweeter than sugar. To make sucralose, chlorine is used. Chlorine has a split personality. It can be harmless or it can be life threatening.

In combination with sodium, chlorine forms a harmless ionic bond to yield table salt. Sucralose makers often highlight this worthless fact to defend its safety. Apparently, they missed the second day of Chemistry 101 — the day they taught covalent bonds.

When used with carbon, the chlorine atom in sucralose forms a covalent bond. The end result is the historically deadly organochlorine or, simply, a Really Nasty Form of Chlorine (RNFOC).

Unlike ionic bonds, covalently bound chlorines are a big no-no for the human body. They yield insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides — not something you want in the lunch box of your precious child. It’s therefore no surprise that the originators of sucralose, chemists Hough and Phadnis, were attempting to design new insecticides when they discovered it! It wasn’t until the young Phadnis accidentally tasted his new insecticide that he learned it was sweet. And because sugars are more profitable than insecticides, the whole insecticide idea got canned and a new sweetener called Splenda got packaged.

To hide its origin, Splenda™ pushers assert that sucralose is “made from sugar so it tastes like sugar.” Sucralose is as close to sugar as Windex™ is to ocean water.

The RNFOC poses a real and present danger to all Splenda™ users. It is risky because the RNFOC endows a molecule with a set of super powers that wreak havoc on the human body. For example, Agent Orange, which used in the U.S Army’s herbicidal warfare program, is a RNFOC. Exposure can lead to Hodgkin’s lymphoma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as well as diabetes and various forms of cancer. Other shocking examples are the war gas phosgene, chlordane and lindane.2 The RNFOC is lethal because it allows poisons to be fat-soluble while rendering the natural defense mechanisms of the body helpless.

A poison that is fat-soluble is akin to a bomb that explodes internally. It invades every nook and cranny of the body. Cell walls and DNA — the genetic map of human life — become nothing more than potential casualties of war when exposed. Sucralose is only 25 per cent water soluble.3 This means a vast majority of it may explode internally. In general, this results in weakened immune function, irregular heart beat, agitation, shortness of breath, skin rashes, headaches, liver and kidney damage, birth defects, cancer, cancer and more cancer — for generations!1

McNeil asserts that its studies prove it to be safe for everyone, even children. That’s little assurance. Learning from the Vioxx™debacle (and many others highlighted in my book Health Myths Exposed) which killed tens of thousands, we know that studies can be bought and results fabricated.

Some things are worth dying for. Splenda is not one of them. What people think of as a food is a drug or slow poison — little distinction there. It wouldn’t be wise to bet your health on it. If safe, sucralose would be the first molecule in human history that contained a RNFOC fit for human consumption. This fact alone makes sucralose questionable for use as a sweetener, if not instantly detrimental to our health. Only time will tell. Until then, Ill stick to the safe and naturally occurring stevia plant to satisfy my occasional sweet tooth in 2007.

Be forewarned, though. As long as drugs can be legally disguised as sweeteners, watch out for drugs being disguised as vitamins… Oh wait, they are already doing that — think Lipitor.

About the Author
Shane Ellison holds a master’s degree in organic chemistry and has first-hand experience in drug design. After abandoning his career as a medical chemist, he dedicated himself to stopping prescription-drug hype. He is an internationally recognized authority on therapeutic nutrition and author of Health Myths Exposed, The Hidden Truth about Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs and The AM-PM Fat Loss Discovery. His books and FREE Life Saving Health Briefs can be found at www.healthmyths.net.